Latest Audio News

I signed up for a trial subscription to Tidal last week, and decided to stay with the service after a few days of streaming to my desktop speakers and to my Sonos system (Spotify on Sonos sucks). I don't consider myself an audiophile--I don't even own a turntable--but I am passionate about audio quality, and Tidal streams in the same format that I use to rip the CDs that I purchase.

Just over two months ago Sony gave up on Music Unlimited, the company's homegrown music streaming service, in favor of a deal to bring Spotify to PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3 consoles. The new service, dubbed PlayStation Music, goes live Monday and is available to both premium and ad-supported Spotify users.

The National Football League has a long way to go before it can match the live streaming chops of pro baseball, but the NFL's online offerings have been getting a little bit better every season. When the 2015-16 season starts up this fall, the NFL will reportedly try an experiment that could have major implications for cord cutters.

I had a firm belief that this head-to-head was going to be a rout for VideoLAN Player aka, VLC. Over the years, I've used Media Player Classic - Home Cinema (MPC-HC), it's predecessor Media Player Classic, and VLC extensively. MPC-HC's pronounced and long-time tendency to crash pushed nearly everyone, including myself, to the somewhat geeky, but very capable VLC.

What, music streaming services are just beating CDs now?! In 2014, the money generated from streaming services finally outpaced compact disc shipments, according to a recent report from the Recording Industry Association of America. Revenue from streaming services such as Pandora, Spotify, and music video services like Vevo and YouTube hit $1.87 billion in 2014. CD shipments, meanwhile, were valued at $1.85 billion.

The first crack has appeared in the pay-TV hegemony: New York-based Cablevision Systems has announced its intent to offer HBO Now to its customers who take its Internet service offering, but not its pay-TV service.

A mild-mannered tech and media support coordinator for Oregon State University Extension Service by day, Victor Villegas takes on the persona of The Drone Singer during his off hours. Yes, he fashions himself as the Weird Al Yankovic of drone songs.

Large music licensing services should have more freedom to negotiate rates paid by streaming music services, radio stations and commercial establishments where music is played, industry executives told U.S. lawmakers.

If you're a heavy Pandora user, subscribing to Pandora One is a no-brainer: For only $4.99 per month, you get higher-quality audio streams and no ads. But if all you want is an ad-free day of music for that dinner party or get-together, Pandora may soon have an option for you: GigaOm reports, Pandora plans to introduce a "day pass," which would allow you to pay a small fee for a day of ad-free listening.

Rumors of Apple launching an all-you-can-stream music service are nothing new. Ever since the company acquired Beats Music in May 2014, speculation has been rife that it could use some of the underlying technology for a new service under its own brand. Now, a couple of fresh reports have the Cupertino-based company finally launching that rumored Beats Music-based streaming service at WWDC in June.

The real-time lyrics feature that Spotify added to its desktop app this past week hasn't impressed the U.S. karaoke industry. Joseph C Vangieri, the CEO of DigiTrax, has called it "unfair competition for us American 'Karaoke' companies."

Amazon's voice-activated, cloud-enabled speaker and smart-home assistant, Echo, is quite clearly a work in progress. In its current form, it's more of a voice-controlled speaker than a virtual assistant for your home, when it should be the other way round. But this could change very soon as the e-tailing giant is about to kick this ambitious experiment into high gear.

Smart home- or wearable tech: which is more likely to benefit your digital life this year?

I'm more likely to buy smart home- than wearable tech this yearI'm more likely to buy wearable- than smart home tech this yearI'll probably buy both smart home- and wearable tech this yearI'm unlikely to buy smart home- or wearable tech this yearNot sure/don't know